Wednesday, December 7, 2016

Since 1977,
re-enacting scenes from Star Wars has been a fun outdoor activity for kids. Depending
on where you live though, it might take a little more imagination for some
moments!

If you live
near a forest then it is easy to recreate the battle of Endor. If you live near
swamps then you have an instant Dagobah for Jedi training with Yoda! If you
happen have a sandy desert area nearby suddenly you can imagine you’re
podracing on Tatooine or stealing the Millennium Falcon from Unkar Plutt on
Jakku.

Whether you
get your lightsabers out and duel in the snow, or bring your action figures
outside and hope they don’t get lost until spring, here’s a few ideas for more outdoor winter play the Star Wars
way!

In the
movie Rey, Finn and Kylo Ren face off in an epic winter lightsaber fight. Finn
starts trying his skills with the lightsaber but it’s Rey who really challenges
Kylo during the snowy battle.

Starkiller
Base itself offers many wintery moments, from the crash of the Falcon to Han,
Chewie and Finn trying to get inside. If you think the Force will keep you warm
though, remember Han’s words there: “That’s not how the Force works!"

Or you
could recreate General Hux’s passionate speech about the First Order, though
you may need a lot of friends to be the Stormtroopers! Perhaps a few of the troops could be snowmen?

Do you want to build a snowtrooper?

The deleted
scenes from The Force Awakens (available on the bluray) provide
even more inspiration for fun, including a snow-speeder chase that did not make
it into the final movie.

Friday, December 2, 2016

If you’ve
seen the Star Wars movies then you already know a lot about Princess Leia
Organa, later known as General Organa by the time of The Force Awakens. However there’s also plenty of other details of
her adventures to be learned through further reading!

A new book
in Scholastic’s “Backstories” series, the first Star Wars title in the set,
pieces together these tales into one chronological life story.

Princess
Leia: Royal Rebel is a 128 page biographical chapter book by Calliope Glass (co-author
of ABC-3PO) and illustrated
throughout by comic artist Joe Quinones. It’s a great way to catch up on Leia’s
official story.

Starting
during the Clone Wars era, the story explains - in an age-appropriate way - the
dark circumstances of how Leia came to be adopted by Bail and Breha Organa of
Alderaan. Glass then moves forward with details of young Leia’s life,
details that have been previously revealed over the past few years in Marvel Comics’
Princess Leia series and Leia’s season
2 appearance on Star Wars Rebels.

Young Leia and her family on Alderaan

As she grows
into adulthood, the events of Episodes 4, 5 & 6 unfold from Leia’s
perspective. Along the way, gaps in time are filled by more adventures from the
Marvel comic series and from the middle-grade novel Moving Target.

It’s great
to have a book like this because many interested young readers may not be quite
ready to tackle Moving Target or to
read the Teen-rated comic books yet, but will still want to know what happened outside of the movies.

Marvel's Princess Leia

Little is
known about Leia between Return of the
Jedi and The Force Awakens, and
according to this book, she likes it that way. Privacy is hard to come by for a
Princess and a Rebel leader!

What is
known is that somewhere in there she and Han Solo married and had one child,
Ben Solo, who later turned to the Dark Side and called himself Kylo Ren! Also
in that time, Leia was the key leader in forming the Resistance. It’s quite a
life she’s had, and nobody knows at this point what events may take place in
Episode 8 or beyond!

Leia on a mission between Episode 4 & 5

The story
flows well despite the jumps in time as it incorporates the details from
different sources. Recent chapter books like Rey’s Storyand Finn’s Story have done a similar thing but are limited because they have far less official information
available to include.

This book is a little closer to the wonderful
biographical middle grade novels Scholastic published a few years ago like The Rise and Fall of Darth Vader and The Life and Legend of Obi-Wan Kenobi
(both by Ryder Windham, 2008) which also pulled details together from multiple movies
and other sources.

Quinones’ many
black and white illustrations add to tie the story
together. The artwork is somewhat similar to the pictures in the terrific Han
Solo “Adventures in Hyperspace” chapter books (2010), also written by Ryder Windham (and
also from Scholastic publishing). The cover artwork is by the amazing Phil Noto
(illustrator of Moving Target, Weapon of
a Jedi, and more!)

It’s great
to see Scholastic publishing Star Wars chapter books again, and they picked a
fantastic place to start with Princess
Leia: Royal Rebel!

Tuesday, November 22, 2016

A new series of picture books from Disney-Lucasfilm Press begins
this month with the release of Luke and the Lost Jedi Temple by
Jason Fry, author of many Star Wars books (Aliens of the Galaxy, Star Wars in 100 Scenes, Rey's Survival Guide).

What makes this series unique is that these picture books
are all fully-illustrated adaptations of middle-grade Star Wars novels from
2015.

Luke and the Lost Jedi
Temple is a very abridged version of Fry’s own The Weapon of a Jedi, published as part of the “Journey to The
Force Awakens” titles. The black, white and occasional red illustrations
from Weapon are replaced here with
full-colour digital paintings from Pilot Studio.

If you look carefully Sarco Plank is in The Force Awakens!

The story is the same though as Luke Skywalker, not long after the destruction of the first Death Star, makes an
emergency landing on a strange planet. Luke finds himself being drawn by the
Force to a long-abandoned Jedi temple. Along the way he makes a new friend
Farnay and a mysterious – possibly dangerous - guide named Sarco Plank.

Fry turns his original novel into a quick adventure for
younger readers to enjoy while the full colour illustrations capture the
action.

The book also comes with two pages of stickers based on
characters and scenes in the story.

As mentioned above, this book begins a new series as other
middle-grade novels will be soon adapted into this format.Other titles to look forward to:

Leia and the Great Island Escape (Adapted from Moving Target) (Dec 2016)